Committee deals with, i wanted to ask you about Stem Education area you come from a science background. Science education. What is your committee doing when it comes to Stem Education and what do you think the congress should be doing. Let me start with the committee. The committee has asked path to major pieces of legislation that was bipartisan, pass on a consent calendar but it has lower in the senate. It is extraordinarily important that we not only just spread the word but also put in instruments and in the environment, and the environment to make sure that women and minorities arent told about the importance of stem courses and were seeing it every day. Because innovation is our future and we dont have the people educated and trained and we see a lack of the brainpower now with affecting theimmigration. H1b visas are topped out, we are seeing fewer and fewer students coming from india, china we have had lots of support in that area. We just all recently for example the nobel laureate, none of them were johnson, jones or smith. And then much of our brainpower has been imported. We want to be in a position to furnish our own brainpower. The only way were going to ever be able to do that is to educate women and minorities in the stanfield and that comes in many categories area that weve even coined the phrase more recently called bluecollar stem. Where no amount of phds or graduate degrees might even be necessary to havethose skills to be very innovative. And to be in a good workforce that is producing some of the innovation. Joining us in our conversation today is mccleskey who covers technology for the washington post. Thanks for having me on the show. I wanted to follow up on a point you made around Stem Education and diversity. For the past five years weve seen Silicon ValleyTech Companies make promises to diversify their workforces but they repeatedly put out reports that show the numbers havent changed that much. What do you think that Companies Need to be doing to address diversity in tech . Were just beginning to get the results of our seven study, way back when i burst on the committee, congresswoman Connie Morella and i did legislation as to what why more women were not going into the field and remaining and we did find interesting findings, that still remain true today and that is the possibility that women sometimes find in maledominated professions from the past. It is no longer should be maledominated because first of all, we have more women now than men and we have more minorities coming on to the forefront so we should be inclusive. We need all the talent we can get and we got to make sure that their opportunities for women in childbearing age and whatever ages might have the opportunity to be into these fields. And like i just mentioned earlier, we are broadening the standards to include what we consider bluecollar stem. Workforce readiness, Community CollegeLevel Education and sometimes high school. We are about to lose our edge in innovation. We cannot afford to do that. We must be very forceful in making sure that there are opportunities that young people are aware of them and especially women, that there are many opportunities, because we are in the age of innovation. We cannot stay on the world stage without having people that are in tune with innovation. Its a way of thinking. We got the mold those and died that innovative thinking, creative thinking and Critical Thinking. Madam chair, your committee recently hosted a hearing on Artificial Intelligence and i wanted to ask you, as Artificial Intelligence is becoming more prevalent, how do you think the usapproach to Stem Education needs to evolve. Its getting to be more important than ever. An Artificial Intelligence, were just beginning to crack the ice and looking into the area. Weve had looking at the type of research we need to do. I do not want us to sit around and think that Artificial Intelligence is going to disappear. Weve got to be ready for thatinnovation. And we got to make sure that the workforce is ready. And its critical. And while we are doing a lot of focuses on many other things,that is our future. Thats how Workforce Readiness future. Eddie Bernice Johnson, is it important that the us beat china when it comes to ai . Its important that we keep pace and hopefully sometimes we will lead but were not invested the same amount of time and money in the research to keep up with china. That is a concern that i have. We cannot assume that we can keep up with out those investments. Weve got to invest in the research and weve got to invest in education area. I wanted to follow up last night at the democratic debate, automation was a key issue that came up and one president ial candidate, andrew yang, an entrepreneur from new york has been proposing universal basic income to address the changes in work that ai might bring to the us economy. What do you think of those puzzles for a universal basic income . Thats an idea we need to entertain. Im not going to the door on any idea because we are challenged by our future. We in this country are losing ground. We cannot afford that. We have got to invest in order to have the returns on the investment. And i just wanted to also ask you more broadly, tech issues are coming up more and more on the debate stage last night. What do you think of the proposals that weve seenfrom lawmakers like senator Elizabeth Warren to break up big tech . Thats yet to be explored. However, i will say that all of the ideas that are coming forward, we have seen them coming over the years and many of these ideas did at the development of the check, semi conductor. Which wasdeveloped right in the backyard or where i represent. And so many of the innovative ideas are being put to work there. A good example is that texas was one of the first states to do this Distance Learning with schools because we didnt have teachers in some of the rural areas. Then that developed into distant medicine area so as a state with innovation, we are accustomed to seeing it. We are now seeing robots doing room service and hotels. Were also just recently starting to look at robots having luggage at the dollar store at the airport. We just started in may with ups delivering arizona and colorado, ups packaging. So when we see that happening right in our faces, without any prior preparation necessarily, we know theres more to come. And we must you ready for it. Not only should we just wait to see that its coming, we ought to be a part of that development. And weve got to take some responsibility to make sure that we have the skills. We now see that Autonomous Vehicle travel is probably right here on thehorizon. We need to focus more on getting people who are accustomed to driving these trucks behind some computer or some technology to help drive them and refine the driving of those trucks. It is not too soon. As a matter of fact, four years ago i started talking about trying to do legislation to start to train drivers. It failed. We were never able to get it sold that we could get the support to have enabling legislation passed the house and it was killed in the senate. And some of the ideas is this is not going to happen. We see now that it is going to happen. We started this evolution of innovation with technology and Artificial Intelligence. With our own research. Now were letting the rest of the world as a spy. We cannot afford that we got the people, theyre capable of getting the education and training and wegot to take some of the responsibility of making sure that they are trained. We got to make sure we have adequate training areas. And we really affect make sure that we encourage young minds. To think more critically. To make better choices and choose what they major in and perhaps even making a choice of coming to Community College or Workforce Development, then maybe going into afouryear college at the beginning. But weve got to do innovation to make sure that we remain as a part of the cutting edge. I cant say remain thecutting edge because were just about to lose that edge. But we cant afford to do it. Weve got to beat it up. Representative johnson, you referenced Texas Instruments and the chip and silicon chip, but what about your district today. How hightech is it . My district is pretty hightech. Were trying to be ready to face that hightech as part of it, our Community Colleges are stepping up. We just had a large grant for Workforce Development presented to us a couple of weeks ago. From google. And so this will continue, but what im more concerned about, whether or not we are receptive enough to start to emphasize from the time young people start to school, the Critical Thinking and guidance, we need more counselors to try to make sure that we are not missing out on talent could become very natural. One of the concerns that been expressed over the years of hearings in congress is that congress is not tech savvy. Whats your take . An idea like that at least part of it is true. But we have got to be more focused on our future. We cannot be any more focused on our future than what we will be focused on innovation. That is what is driving the world. We have seen all the Space Research and what has come from it. Its brought us lots of goods and lots of services. Weve gotten five dollars for every dollar weve invested and that is just the beginning. Were still talking about more research we got to be much more realistic and involving a lot more young people. Is not just the exclusive highminded. We got to include all of our minds in order to meet the challenge. I wanted to ask you, you talk a lot about Stem Education and efforts to stay focused on innovation in the future in congress but in this politically divided moment in washington as impeachment heats up, do you think that theres bipartisan will in congress to pass some of thesemeasures that youve mentioned . Let me just say that in the science, space and Technology Committee thisyear , most, 95 percent of the legislation that has come on the committee have been very bipartisan. We arefocused on that. It should not be partisan. Technology is not partisan. Technology doesnt see what color, what gender and nor should we be worried about that other than inclusivity. We are continuing to Work Together as a committee. We have a very robust committee, very bright new minds and some returning members, but weve got new energy, new interest and we are covering the areas of entry. I cant say that where getting the attention we deserve, but we are doing hard work and its hard work thats going to matter in the future. On that point, i know there was recently a hearing on the fix, videos that are edited with Artificial Intelligence to make it look like people are doing or saying things that never happened and that seems to be an area where there was a lot of bipartisan concern and as we get closer and closer to the 20 20 election, do you think the Tech Companies are doing enough to address disinformation . That is difficult to tell. I think that we need to be more knowledgeable so that we also can be involved in knowing what we need to look for. So that we will know ourselves when its off course. That is a challenge. Its a challenge because weve not been down this road before but there are many other roads that are going to be coming along that we have not been before that we have to make sure we step up to the plate and it has to be bipartisan. You know, the constitution is not partisan. The responsibility to this nation is not partisan. We have allowed ourselves to fall off into a lot of partisan is him and i hope we will see much of that big and to come to an end as we focus on what we really need to focus on for our future and that is innovation and thinking and working together. Were not in a fight with each other. We are in competition with the rest of the world and we want to be relevant. Madam chair, there is some thought that the socialmedia companies, twitter, facebook , some of these platforms insight partisanship. I think thats very true and i think thats because we allow it. Weve got to be a little more aggressive in making sure theres responsibility there and i think im beginning to see some of those questions and some of that responsibility beginning to show. On that point about responsibility, i wanted to ask you about what you think the Tech Companies responsibility is when it comes to political content. That weve seen in recent weeks that facebook has announced it doesnt want to act as a referee when it comes to content politicians post on its site. Weve seen twitter hold content of politicians to a different standard, not taking it downwhen it might otherwise violate their policies. This has been a contentious issue with democrats recently so you think that facebook and twitter should take action when the president uses their platforms to spread falsehoods . I do. I know theres, it gets to be a pretty close edge of freedom of speech, but at the same time, i think we ought to have a freedom of responsibility and it should be as equal as possible and notbiased. Sometimes i think that many of these platforms are very aware that much of this material has been unfair and it is the environment of freedom of speech, they letit go. They accepted. Which im not sure it should. Were all going to be one party or the other and i guess thats a democracy but i think we need to, thats one of the reasons we need a lot of young bright people coming along that will have access to the skills and technology can challenge the administration to see whether that is real freedom of speech or whether its a distortion both of freedom and of speech. Representative johnson, recentb poll showed that Election Security is a major issue for the majority of votersand this is something your committee has looked at as well. We have and ivelived that. And this country, we have always had a question as to whether or not theres real freedom in expression. And that is critical to a democracy and that is one of the things that i feel very, very strongly about and its not anything that necessarily happened in the past. Its whats happening now with new technology. You feel that this country is ready for the 20 20 elections when it comes to the technology and the Voting Machines . I cant tell you that i feel that confident that we are area and i hope that we all are working to get there. And i hope that we really are all working to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to have their votes counted accurately without a lot of interference that has not been expected. The interesting thing about getting into all this new technology is that it does test whether or not we are focusing on the right interpretation of our constitution. Freedom of speech is one thing. And fairness within that freedom of speech, accuracy , might have a challenge. Representative johnson, i wanted to ask you about what the executive branch might be able to do to address Election Security. There was a recent Senate Intelligence report that said that the executive branch could do more to call out and raise awareness about misinformation i had of the election area do you agree with that . I agree with that. I also agree that theres also that executive branch has been questioned about their fairness and so youve got to start off with a clear platform. To convince people thatyou really are looking for fairness. I do think its possible if weve got people in place that also feel that its possible rather than people and places looking for a way toget around fairness. That brings into play character. Youve got to want to be honest to be honest. Madam chair, when it comes to 5g, is this country ready for that new technology, for that new speed . Im not sure that i can answer that a yes, sir no. I think we are whether we are ready or not with many of these technologies, were going to experience them. I think i our readiness will depend on whether or not we have the skill to protect the people and to still make sure that we can be honest and upfront on what we really are dealing with. I do think that technology has no boundaries. Its going to be the people you are guiding who decide when we get beyond the morality of the technology. We cant continue to let things go without some degree of checking to be sure that we are reaching a fair balance. But now, whether or not we can just get out there and its technology, to me thats like saying four years ago to some people in this body we need to look at some publicly responsibility for training the workforce because technology and innovation is going to alternate and then the response was like, lets stop it. We cant stop it. Weve got to learn to deal with it with fairness and honesty and integrity. When you talk about the checks and balances system, what kind of a Regulatory Framework do you see . We will have to have some Regulatory Framework. I believe in regulation. I believe in discipline. Kind of platform we need, im not sure im in a position to tell you but i do know this area with good research, we can figure it out and i really strongly believe in good basic research to help us guide our way for the futurebecause were going to need. I wanted to ask as you focus on innovation, as there is a growing pressure on big tech in washington and more calls for privacy revelation, do you worry that can have a negative impact on innovationand startups moving forward . I think thats a part of the environment. Very honestly, im not sure sure how much privacy we can depend on him g